Foreign workers will be involved in setting up the four proposed Honda electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing plants in Ontario, the province has confirmed.
Ontario Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli said “short-term technical experts” will be brought in both to install equipment at the plants as well as to train Ontarians.
“You need those technical experts,” Mr. Fedeli said April 28 on CBC’s “Rosemary Barton Live.”
“They’re going to come in not only to help install but train hundreds and then thousands of the employees on how to use the equipment—and then return. They really are short-term technical experts.”
He said the province is “insisting” the four Honda plants hire Ontario workers, but the federal Conservatives are questioning the use of taxpayer dollars to fund foreign employees.
Tory MP and industry critic Rick Perkins said his party is bringing a motion to the Government Operations Committee on April 29 to force the Liberal government to “reveal the truth about Canadian taxpayer dollars being used to hire foreign replacement workers instead of Canadian workers.”
“The choice for the NDP is simple. They must either side with Conservatives, Canadian union workers and taxpayers, or help Justin Trudeau hide the truth from Canadians again.”
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said Ottawa needs to stop writing “blank cheques” without ironclad guarantees for unionized workers, but did not say if he would support the Tory motion.
“There needs to be guarantees baked into any public dollar we spend, and should be tied to jobs and investments that benefit Canadians,” Mr. Singh said.
Previous Project
This is not the first time the issue of foreign workers coming to work on Canadian auto plants subsidized by taxpayer money has been an issue.Concerns rose again earlier in April causing Canada’s Building Trades Unions (CBTU) executive director Sean Strickland to pen a letter asking the prime minister to look into the use of temporary foreign workers to build the Windsor plant.
“Over the last several months, Canada’s Building Trades Unions have diligently worked to secure an agreement to ensure Canadians are employed in the construction and installation phases of this project, through several months of fruitless meetings with Stellantis and LG. Our efforts have so far failed due to LG and Stellantis’ intransigence.”
The federal Conservatives have cited the NextStar case as proof that the issues surrounding use of foreign workers are likely to surface at the Honda plant as well.
“We can’t trust that his latest announcement of $5 billion in Canadian taxpayer money to another large multinational corporation will be any different,” Mr. Perkins said in a joint statement with Tory international trade critic Kyle Seeback on April 25.
Workers ‘Need and Deserve Assurances’
The Conservatives and CBTU are not alone in their concerns about the foreign worker issue.Unifor National President Lana Payne has also expressed concerns.
“Honda workers and those in the supply base will have many questions that deserve answers. Questions about job security, income security during the transition, and what their job of the future will be. They will need and deserve assurances.”
The Japanese automaker said it will strive to establish a comprehensive EV value chain where the EVs will be manufactured entirely in Canada, from the procurement of raw materials mainly for batteries to the production of finished vehicles. It expects production to begin in 2028. Once the plant is fully operational, it will produce as many as 240,000 EVs per year, the news release said.
The company also confirmed it will be investing $15 billion in the project, which includes the EV battery plant, the retooling of the existing assembly plant in Alliston, as well as two key battery parts facilities located elsewhere in Ontario. The locations for the two battery parts facilities will be announced in the future.
